Marketing & Promoting Your Website Online and Off
The old marketing adage
"build it and they will come" may have had some
validity in the Net's infancy, but it simply does not hold
true nowadays, with millions of sites out there vying for
surfers' business. So how do you get noticed?
Marketing and promotional information and tools abound, from downright
nonsense to real gems like The Insider Secrets to Marketing on the Internet. Newly released!
The last Corey Rudl product! (see sidebar). We've checked out many of them so that you
don't have to, and will feature some of them here. Be sure to return
often.
For an introduction to Internet marketing, the new book Planning
Your Internet Marketing Strategy will help you put
together a complete Internet marketing plan, from finding a
niche for your business to market analyses to pricing, and
much more.
To start your business's marketing efforts, there are
basically two avenues to consider, and site owners should
employ both.
- offline
promotion
- online
promotion
The degree of emphasis, however, may vary. A business that exists
strictly online will invest more time and effort in online marketing. A
"brick & mortar" store with a website might continue to
focus more on offline promotion than marketing online. Your business's
marketing plan will be your guide.
Offline Promotion
is fairly straightforward: you include your website address
(URL) in anything that leaves your office: stationery,
business cards, print ads, coupons, radio/TV ads or
appearances, preferred customer promotions, etc. Depending
on your type of business, you may also want to create
"online only" specials and advertise them
in your print ads or TV commercials. (Fairness and trade
laws may require you to make these specials available to
everyone for the asking; check with your legal advisor.)
According to Forrester Research, most successful
e-merchants spend nearly half their advertising budget on
offline promotions.
Online
Promotion
is trickier and generally far more time-consuming, the main
issues being a) your website; b) search engine ranking.
Other online avenues include newsgroups and email
newsletters. As banner ads are becoming less and less
effective, we won't discuss them here. Here is a rundown on the most
commonly used marketing avenues:
1) Newsgroups
are online discussion forums defined by subject. Most
newsgroups do not allow blatant advertising, but, by
establishing yourself as an "expert" and always
including a "signature" (sig file), you will
make contacts and leave a trail potential customers may
follow. The drawback is that this trail also attracts
"spammers" – others promoting their products
or services, whether or not you want to receive such
messages. Once your email address is on a mailing list
spammers use, it's practically impossible to get off it!
Therefore, if you have the time to promote yourself on
newsgroups, use one of the many free online email
services, like Hotmail or Yahoo!, and report spammers
to the newsgroup admin and to sites like
Spamcop (which also offers a paid service that protects your
email address). Otherwise, change online email providers
every few months. NEVER use your REAL email address on a newsgroup, nor any other address you care about!
2) Email
newsletters are an excellent, effective way to
promote your products or services. The trick is in doing
it correctly.
DO NOT send
automatic newsletters to everyone you know. Instead, if
you are just starting to produce newsletters, give them
a sampling and ask for subscription. Most newsletters
from commercial sites are sent free of charge.
Set up a form
on your site asking for name and email address to
subscribe
Give a good
value: your newsletter should include valuable
information, such as growing tips for plants, how to
groom your dog, how to change the oil in your car –
whatever might be relevant to your site and, hence, its
visitors. Free advice goes a long way toward customer
loyalty! Don't hesitate to relate an advice column to a
product you sell, but keep the hype very low.
Don't be afraid to mention similar products, esp. if
yours is cheaper or easier to use or excels in some
other way. Give just enough information to stimulate
interest; lead your readers to your site to find out
more.
Keep it
brief. Visitors do not want to read page after page or
wait for the email to download. Three short articles
with a link for more details on your site, plus one or
two promotional paragraphs, should be enough. Keep it
to less than four "pages" (screens).
3) Your site
itself. Since its inception, the Internet supplied
information, and the majority of surfers go online to
learn something. While online shopping is advancing
rapidly, information is still the #1 reason for people to
access the Net. With that in mind, what information are
you offering users on your site? If your site is strictly
brochure-ware, you might be losing visitors, i.e.,
potential customers. Set goals during all phases of site
design/redesign. Promote information more than products.
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The LAST Corey Rudl product!
Today, I'm honored to announce the release of what is, perhaps,
the most informative, shocking, and inspiring Corey Rudl audio
recording of all time.
For 150 minutes (and 29 seconds) you will be a fly on the
wall as the two "GREAT LEGENDS" of Internet marketing and
direct marketing -- Corey and the outrageous Dan Kennedy --
discuss...
How you can make MILLIONS of dollars using the Internet
teamed up with direct mail, radio, TV, classified ads,
Yellow Page ads, infomercials, and MORE!
You'll hear Corey reveal how he made over $40 Million in
Internet sales and taught 1,000s of "real people" how to
make massive incomes of $100,000.00 to $2.5 MILLION (or more!)
per year with the Internet...
You'll hear Dan Kennedy, the legendary GOD of direct (offline)
marketing, talk about how he's made hundreds of MILLIONS of
dollars for his clients, including companies like Amway and
the $200-million-per-year Gunthy-Renker Corporation...
But BEST OF ALL, you'll hear these Millionaire Marketing
Geniuses reveal "advanced" profit secrets that -- until
now -- were reserved for their "inner circle" of close,
personal friends!
For example...
You'll hear the AMAZING true story of two guys who sold
almost IDENTICAL products, with the SAME offer, to the SAME
audience -- yet one guy made $2 Million MORE... all thanks
to just one simple strategy! PLUS, you'll learn which 2
blockbuster marketing ideas Corey got from Dan that made
him over $100,000 in profits (that's cash in hand!) -- in
less than 24 months!
... And that's just for starters!
You quite simply won't find a recorded interview like
this -- anywhere.
A brainstorming session between two marketing geniuses of this
caliber has NEVER been recorded before. And that's why, since
this recording would have been priceless before Corey passed
away, I can't even guess its value now.
To start listening to this 150-minute audio recording right
away, please visit:
Kennedy-Rudl Interview
I hope you enjoy it...
Fauna Art Studios
P.S. The "special edition" release of this recording will only
be available to the first 250 people. After that, it will
either be REMOVED, or the price will be raised to $1,499.00
or MORE -- still a bargain when you consider Corey's
consultation rates were $2,790.00 per hour -- and Dan's rates
are $9,600.00 per day!
To start listening now, visit:
Kennedy-Rudl Interview
Read an extensive
interview with Corey!
In Memoriam: Corey died in a car crash on June 2, 2005. He was only 34 and had recently married. He will be missed
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SEARCH ENGINES
and directories
Here we enter
into the most difficult phase of promoting your website:
there is very little consistency; methods change rapidly
and frequently; ranking criteria are different from one
engine to the next.
In the Net's
infancy, you used to be able to register with the few
search engines in existence and almost be guaranteed a top
spot if you worked at it just a little bit. Now there are
literally thousands of search engines and directories, and
it would be impossible to submit your URL to them all.
Submission services make this relatively easy. Top
positioning on the handful of major engines, however,
requires a great deal of time and effort, and the shotgun
approach of a submission service will not achieve this for
you.
Nowadays, ranking
in the "first 30", i.e., the first two or three
pages that come up on a surfer's search, can be nearly
impossible, depending on the keywords you are targeting. To
complicate matters further, none of the top ten or twelve
engines or directories evaluate and list sites in the same
way, and the algorithms used also change frequently.
Meta tags
"keywords" and "description" (hidden
elements in a web page's code) are used by some search
engines to determine a site's relevancy, although less frequently now than
they used to. Others employ a
combination of meta tags and actual page content, page
content only, or the first 200 characters after the
<body> tag. Some penalize for keyword repetition,
others expect it. Some don't accept automatic submissions
or will lower the position. Some don't reveal how they rank
pages, and with the recent invention of keyword bidding on
some sites as well as pay-per-click "ranking", companies with large advertising budgets will
always come up at the top because they can afford to pay
for those slots, and small businesses are left behind.
There are three
basic ways of getting listed:
Manual
submission. You visit each search engine and follow
their "submit URL" procedure. This costs you
only time, although plenty of it. Be sure to read each
engine's instructions and help files; you may not get a
chance to make changes or correct mistakes.
Automatic
submission. Many such services exist; a few are free
for a limited number of search engines, while most charge
a fee and submit to many sites. However, the big search engines now frown on the practice and may flag you as a spammer. Moreover, submission services brag about the number of search engines they submit to, but many of those are link farms, porn sites, etc. Probably not the kind of company you'd want to keep.
Professional
submission services. These generally help you refine
your keywords, submit your site and/or specific pages to
the major search engines and monitor your ranking,
continuously refining and resubmitting your pages to the
major engines. As this process is time-consuming, these
services cost from a few hundred to several thousand
dollars. However, high ranking can significantly increase
your site's commercial success. We will gladly discuss
this process with you; you'll find our fees quite
reasonable.
Do-it-yourselfers
with enough time on their hands have another option that
gives similar results as a professional service, at a lower
cost. Positioning software that helps you to develop your pages and submit
them, is now available. Both WebPosition
and Search Engine Commando are highly rated and offer free trial
versions. So compare and decide which works best for you.
The main points
to remember here: a site's success is no more automatic
than a retail store's. Ongoing targeted marketing and
promotion is everything. Without it, a few people will
still find you, just like they might happen to pass by your
store, but success is almost impossible to build on the
impulse purchases of a few passersby.
For information about more marketing techniques, please also refer to Dr Wilson's article
on Viral Marketing Principles.
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